HIS378H Lecture Jan 30.docx

o HIS378H Higher ed act. Head start
o Immigration and nationality act
o Social security act
o Clean air and water act
o Voting rights act
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• The End of the Liberal Consensus
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Lecture
Jan 30/2014
• American Political Cultures: The Liberal Tradition
o How do people think and feel about the politics that they are engaged in?
o Competing political cultures and competing narratives
 Elite vs. mass politics
o The personal is the political
o American conservatism: tradition to maintain the existing order, respect for existing
institutions, distrust of government activism, opposition to sudden changes, minimal
government intervention
o American liberalism: during great depression the new deal is established to changed domestic
institutions, changes the way American’s think about poverty and affluence, the public good,
more organized labor, new deal set American on the road to big government and help to
concentrate much of the power into the hands of the executive
o Activist government, government should be seen as helping the people
 Keynesian economics
• Government uses power of taxing and spending to create jobs, etc.
 Pluralist/consensus politics
• Post war world is complicated, and so structured that it is hard to ha